Web traffic

The number of TV viewers has been estimated at around two billion. In reality, that is little more than an educated guess.

Global web traffic was 39% above normal during the wedding according to Akamai

Quantifying the popularity of a topic on particular sites, such as Facebook and Twitter is possible.

However, it is difficult to gauge the impact on the internet overall.

At the height of the wedding, global web traffic, as measured by Akamai, was 39% higher than normal.

Although there is no firm evidence that this was due to the wedding, the United Kingdom was listed as a hot spot, with the country accounting for 11% of online activity.

Republican option

Such was the mood of global celebration that not even the notorious "Great firewall of China" was set to filter out information about William and Kate's nuptials.

The story, along with a picture of the bride and groom, topped the news page of the country's most popular search engine, Baidu.

The Guardian newspaper offered two versions of its website - one for royalists, the other for republicans

Brits seeking a wedding-free news source had to look closer to home.

Refuge was to be found on the website of the Guardian Newspaper.

Visitors to the publication's homepage were presented with the option of a "royalist" version, complete with blanket coverage, or a "republican" version, devoid of the merest mention of William, Kate or Tara Palmer Tomkinson's hat.